Europe can claim no share in the discovery of porcelain, the white and
translucent pottery _par excellence_, for when the first specimens of
Chinese porcelain were brought to Europe, perhaps as early as the 11th
or 12th century, they excited the greatest wonder and admiration. Cairo
was at this time the great mart for the exchange of the products of East
and West, and from this centre porcelains were sent into Europe. Nasir i
Khosrau, the Persian traveller, who visited Old Cairo in A.D. 1035-1042,
was evidently acquainted with Chinese porcelain, and he also speaks of a
translucent ware made at Fostat (Old Cairo) which may well have been the
progenitor of the glassy porcelains of Persia, as well as of those made
in Italy during the 15th and 16th centuries. In A.D. 1171 the famous
Saladin sent from Cairo a present of forty pieces of Chinese porcelain
to the sultan of Babylon; and from that time onwards we have frequent
records of pieces of this exotic pottery finding their way into the
treasuries of European princes. With the renewed attention paid to the
potter's art in Europe after the 14th century, it was but natural that
efforts should be made to imitate a material so mysterious and
beautiful. But knowledge of Chinese materials and methods was _nil_, and
for a further two centuries all that Europe manufactured in the shape of
translucent pottery was the artificial porcelain made with glass, which
can only be looked upon as a substitute for true porcelain. In Italy
during the 16th century, and in France during the century from 1670 to
1770 roughly, this artificial porcelain was made and developed. At
Meissen in Saxony the famous Böttger made a true porcelain from
materials analogous to the Chinese about 1710-1712, and this manufacture
was pursued in Germany, Austria and elsewhere in Europe (even in France,
the home of the artificial glassy porcelain, after 1770), so that by the
end of the 18th century, when Chinese porcelain had reached and passed
its zenith, the manufacture of a similar material was well established
in Europe, and the glassy porcelains had been generally abandoned. The
only country which offered any departure from this general rule was
England. The earliest English porcelains were derived from the French,
and, like them, owed their translucence to the use of glass. Efforts
were made at Plymouth and at Bristol (1758-1781) to introduce the
manufacture of porcelain, like the Chinese and its German counterparts,
but these failed and the English potters finally invented a third kind
of porcelain, in which calcined ox-bones were added to the clay and
ground rock to give a white translucent porcelain capable of receiving
any form of decoration. This distinctively English porcelain, perfected
about 1800, is not only the principal kind made in England in our own
times, but its manufacture has been adopted, to some extent in France,
Germany and Sweden, as well as in the United States.
It is impossible to describe these various efforts of European potters
without a certain amount of overlapping, for during the 18th century all
the three kinds of European porcelain were struggling for supremacy. It
is advisable, therefore, to keep clearly in mind which kind of porcelain
is in question, for many problems of manufacture and decoration are
absolutely determined by the nature of the materials.
If we could trust to documentary evidence alone, the earliest European
porcelains were made at Venice in 1470, and again in 1519; while we also
read of its manufacture at Ferrara in 1561.[34] Unfortunately,
documentary evidence alone is not conclusive, and the first European
porcelain, known from actual specimens as well as by documentary
evidence, was that made at Florence in the laboratory of Francesco de'
Medici, between 1575 and 1585. Specimens of this rare porcelain are to
be found only in great museums and private collections, where they rank
among our chief ceramic treasures. They show clearly that the Florentine
potters never fully mastered their difficult material, for the ware is
always imperfect and compares indifferently in whiteness and
translucence with fine porcelain, while the glaze is neither smoothly
melted nor free from defects. Obviously the effect of Chinese blue and
white porcelain was aimed at, the decorations, reminiscent of the style
of the Persian pot-painters, being executed in cobalt blue alone. These
rare and interesting pieces bear distinctive marks; for at their period
the use of painters' marks or monograms had become fairly general on
artistic pottery in Europe. One of the best known marks is the "palle"
or balls of the arms of the Medici family, bearing the letters "F M M E
D II." for "Franciscus Medici Magnus Etruriae Dux II."; while other
pieces have a rude representation of the Great Dome of Florence and the
letter "F."
[Illustration: Florentine Potter's mark.]
[Illustration: PLATE VIII.
Chinese. K'ang-hsi period.
Chinese. Black ground. K'ang-hsi period.
Chinese (_Famille Verte_). K'ang-hsi period.
Chinese (_Famille Rose_). Ch'ien-lung period.